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Florida Poly students help voice emotions for those who can’t

Posted on February 7, 2019

Florida Polytechnic University students and a Tampa technology company are developing a mobile app that could help those with brain-based language impediments to express their emotions. This includes people with autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, dementia, aphasia, those who have suffered a traumatic brain injury or stroke, and many other language-impaired conditions.

The app, called OiGO–which comes from the Spanish word for “hear”–uses technology to overcome the communication barrier that so many of these patients struggle with. It allows the user to select the emotion they’re feeling–such as sadness–and then select a reason why that emotion is being felt. The two components to the app are OiGO SELF, the sentence construction portion, and OiGO HELP ME, which is the behavioral solution component.

Jason Smith, a Florida Polytechnic University student, shows the mobile app OiGO. Smith is part of a group of seniors collaborating with a Tampa company to develop the app designed to help those with brain-based language impediments communicate with family, friends, care givers and health professionals.

“In essence, it’s a conversation starter,” said Albert Fernandez, co-founder and chief executive officer of Assistive Communications Technologies (ACT), based in Tampa, Florida. “We’ve conducted four years of pretty intensive research, and nothing exists to help them unite communication and emotion, two components that are so important to social and emotional health.”

Fernandez works closely with his cousin and business partner, Brenda Pharr Jensen. He said the inspiration for OiGO is from a family member with numerous language and speech impairments.

“We thought we could help solve two problems at once, the inability to express emotion and, as a result, the self-destructive behavior that ensues,” added Fernandez, who has been a language arts educator for more than 25 years.

The main challenge for ACT has been OiGO’s software development, and that’s where Florida Poly comes in. A group of five students has been working on not only the coding aspect of the development, but they are using their skills to provide a more enhanced user experience, such as eliminating scrolling functions to make selection easier.

“The whole focus is to make the user experience very friendly and very easy because it’s supposed to be helping people,” said Andrew Lopez, a senior from Valrico, Florida, majoring in computer science.

Thanks to the students’ work, the OiGO app became fully functional recently and entered its alpha testing phase. This will enable ACT to gather feedback from users to gauge the app’s functionality and go over the results with the students.

“I’m thrilled with what the students have done so far,” said Fernandez. “This is our passion and it’s something we really think is going to make a difference in the world.”

About Florida Polytechnic University
Florida Polytechnic University is an accredited member of the State University System of Florida, dedicated exclusively to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The University is a powerful economic engine within the state of Florida, blending applied research with industry partnerships to give students an academically rigorous education with real-world relevance. The campus is located in Lakeland, Florida along the I-4 High Tech Corridor. Connect with Florida Poly.